


Dinner Date

by Ghelik



Series: The 100 Fics [73]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Minor Emori/John Murphy (The 100), Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 06:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18888640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghelik/pseuds/Ghelik
Summary: What if Clarke had taken Bellamy to dine with the Sanctum Royals?





	Dinner Date

**Author's Note:**

> While watching the dinner scene in 603, the way Clarke reacted to the queen's questions about the mountain struck me as really odd. The whole scene was weird to me from Clarke's initial refusal to eat (you have been invited to dinner, lady) to the lack of an explanation about the situation they were during S2, was very weird and clunky to me. So I decided to rewrite it with a bit more Bellamy in it because we all know who is the real diplomat of the two.

“They grow up so fast,” snarks Murphy, leaning towards Emori. The woman smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. The young man has been drinking ever since he came back to, and she is pretty sure this won’t end up well, but she isn’t sure how to tell him to stop, how to erase that haunted look from the depths of his eyes.

“Yes, they do.” Abby’s voice catches Skaikru’s attention, and they turn to the stairs to see first Clarke and then Bellamy in their borrowed clothes.

 _Wanheda_ looks ethereal in her pale gown, but it's Bellamy, limping down the stairs, which makes Murphy whistle low and obscenely. "Man, Echo is gonna be pissed she missed you all dressed up.”

Their leader's ears turn bright pink, and he messes his recently combed hair up, rubbing the back of his head. "Shut up, Murphy." He rolls his shoulders in the slightly too-tight velvet-trimmed jacket, "Thank you, Delilah, for the clothes."

The bartender smiles. “Your escort is waiting outside.”

“Better not keep the royals waiting,” grumbles Bellamy, he squeezes Murphy’s and Emori’s shoulders before turning to the door with Clarke in tow.

"This is our chance," whispers Clarke as they mount the stairs to the palace's entrance.

“I know what we are doing, Clarke.” He sighs, looks over his shoulder towards the fields where Raven, Echo, and Octavia left.

“Hey. I know you’d rather be out there. But with your leg-“

Bellamy twists his lip at that. “I know. Harper was always going on about not straining injuries. Can’t go around ignoring her advice five minutes after-“ He stops dead in his tracks, eyes glassy as the wave of feelings he’s been trying so hard to keep at bay come rushing out. Their redheaded escort frowns at them.

"Bellamy?" Clarke puts her hand on his shoulder, and he flinches back, blinks twice.

“It’s ok.” He takes a shuddering breath. “It’s ok.”

“You sure you’re up for this?”

“Of course.”

Clarke doesn’t look convinced, but he pushes forward, ignoring the pain in his thigh from when she stabbed him, and the pain in his chest, from where his lungs are twisted into knots.

They finally reach the palace and once inside, are guided to a lavish dining room where the King and Queen of this little moon wait for them. Bellamy had never seen chandeliers such as these outside of the movies, or a table with so much curiously shaped food. The music is ethereal and comes out of the walls, bouncing around the room like something of a fairytale. The dog – Picasso – smiles at them from where she’s sitting beside one of the chairs Russell Lightborn, smiles too. His wife does not.

"Welcome, Clarke, Bellamy." Says the King "Join us, please."

The Queen offers them glasses of blood-red wine and Bellamy catches himself staring at her beaded crown-thingy.

Echo has told him about royal dinners at the Azgedan palace, about the luxurious crowns and jewels the Queen and princesses, and even the princes wore to show off the power of their land. He feels distinctly unrefined as he walks further into the room with his borrowed clothes and Factory Station upbringing.

Russell pulls the chair out for his wife, but he isn’t sure that’s what he ought to do for Clarke, and she plops down in her seat before he can decide. Bellamy takes his place on her right side.

“You must be starving.”

He isn't, but his mouth is watering with the display, and he itches to taste it all. He stops himself from stuffing food into his pockets, there is no need to save some for later – to take it back to his sister – but the impulse is still there after all this time, and he isn't sure it will ever go away.

“I am fine, actually,” smiles Clarke primly. “Delilah's family’s been taking good care of us. Thank you for that.”

The King and Queen do pick some food up. "It's rude not to eat when you're a guest at someone's home, Clarke," chastises the Queen, and Bellamy decides he's had enough of this weird flex Clarke is doing. So he picks an odd looking clump of rice and takes a bite.

It's crunchy and bitter with a hint of unknown spices, and Bellamy thinks he might pass out from how good it is. - He has to get Murphy to try one of these, the man might die of happiness.

Clarke picks a small green thing that looks like broccoli.

If her reaction is anything to go by, the broccoli-look-alike is tasty, too.

“We like our simple pleasures here,” says Russell, feeding the dog directly from his plate.

 _Queen Nia had these big dogs_ , Echo used to say, _they looked tame and were always calm when they lay at her feet in the throne room. She was the only one who could feed them by hand. With the snap of her fingers, she could direct them anywhere. Once they tore a man limb from limb in the middle of the throne room._

Bellamy narrows his eyes, but says nothing, forcing himself not to devour the rice clump.

“We don’t like finding strangers in our home.”

“We are really sorry about that,” says Bellamy. “We were running for our lives.”

"Trust me," adds Clarke, her honey-sweet voice pulling strings towards compassion, "it's not the way we wanted to be introduced." Bellamy watches the royals unimpressed stares while Clarke makes their case “Like your founders on Eligius III, we want to start over. Do better.”

"Yes," snaps the Queen, her eyes ice cold, fixed on Clarke, "I would hope so. Considering you destroyed the planet of your birth."

Bellamy takes another bite of his rice-clump to keep his mouth shut.

Let Clarke smooth things out with the high class, like she always does, a lifetime of seeing politics and Alpha Station upbringing coming in handy once again.

“Actually, we were born in space.”

 _On a space station that was also destroyed,_ whispers a tiny voice in the back of his head that sounds distinctly like Raven’s. “But I take your point.” She sighs, turns the full force of her sad blue eyes towards the king, who seems more sympathetic to their plight than his wife. “Here’s the truth. Without your help we won’t survive here, you know it; we know it. Our ancestors did destroy the Earth. But they’re your ancestors, too.”

There is a pause in which the royals seem to be considering. But there's something weird about the look they exchange. Abut the way the Queen purses her lips and turns her full attention back to the blonde. "How many people have you killed, Clarke? Or should we call you, Wanheda?”

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck,

Bellamy leans back on his chair. Not pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Jordan likes to talk,” he grumbles, catching the royal’s eye, while Clarke struggles to get herself back together. “What else did he say?” Maybe everything is not lost Jordan wouldn’t be so stupid-

"He said you went into a protected compound, not unlike this one."

Apparently, he is.

“And murdered everyone inside. Innocent men, women and children alike.”

Tiny hands curled like broken flowers, blistered skin that tore at the slightest touch. The smell of burning flesh. The stench of the cages. Echo’s terrified eyes when the guards came towards her.

Bellamy is barely aware of Clarke snapping "That was different. The mountain men were going to kill everyone that I love. My friends. My mother. I did what I had to do to save my people."

Bellamy fights the memories back. The mountain men are gone. The whole fucking planet where they lived is gone. Get a grip, Blake.

 _Breathe_ , _that’s it, Bell, you’re safe. Breathe._

“Would you do it again?”

“We were at war.”

“It’s not what I asked.”

Clarke’s hackles are up, her shoulders tense and she’s digging herself into a ditch.

“If I may, can I ask you a question? Bellamy's voice is harsher than he intended, but it snaps the attention of both royals away from Clarke. The Queen's dark eyebrows arch arrogantly. "Do you have a basement full of 3-foot cages where you systematically torture the people outside this compound? Are you making cannibal drug-addicts that turn on their loved ones and kidnap innocents so that you can experiment on them? Do you need our bone marrow to survive? Are you the monsters people tell their children at night?" Bellamy takes a deep breath, forcing his temper back.

“Bellamy-“ warns Clarke

“Your friend is very passionate,” says the Queen, her tone clearly unimpressed.

“You haven’t answered _my_ question,” growls Bellamy.

“Of course we don’t torture people!”

"Jordan wasn't there when the Mountain Men put his parents into cages and started draining his mom. He wasn't there when they killed Fox, throwing her broken body out like trash, and I guess his parents spared him the worst details. What we did inside that mountain will haunt us forever. And Clarke is right, we were at war. Not because we wanted to, but because they kidnapped our people – children - and drained them of their bone marrow. We tried everything, but they refused to find a better solution. They pushed us against the ropes.”

“What Bellamy’s trying to say-“

“Oh, I think he’s expressed himself quite clearly.”

The silence that follows is heavy. The Queen rolls her tongue over her teeth, the king feeds his dog. “Jordan said there are 400 more of you in your mother ship: warriors, thieves, murderers.”

Clarke swallows. “All we are asking for is a second chance.”

“Did he mention we also have farmers, engineers, medics, children?”

“Your point?”

"My point is, we aren't asking you to just let us move in. We are hard-working people, we could learn a lot from each other. And, of course, we will follow your rules and your cult to the Primes."

"Violence is a contagion," says Russell slowly. "But I can't let your disease wipe out what we must now presume to be the last outpost of humanity in the universe." He exhales like he's carrying a heavy burden. "When your friends return I suggest you fly back to your mothership. Because you won’t survive outside the shield.”

Clarke swallows thickly. “We can change.”

"The last outpost of humanity in the universe,” chuckles Bellamy, standing up to go. “Somehow that is the third time I meet 'the last human society in the universe,' And you are the least humane of them. “Don’t worry. As soon as our people come back, we will leave. I am sure the people in the forest can be reasoned with.”

 

 


End file.
